Why Play Games on the PC?

This year is shaping up to be an exciting one for gamers. The next generation of consoles is on the way and there are some huge titles on the horizon. Whether you’re a PC gamer or a console fan, you have a lot to look forward to.

Each new generation of consoles sparks a “console war” amongst fans who love to proclaim the superiority of their chosen system. Debates about which system has the highest specifications, best exclusives and even best controllers, crop up everywhere online. Currently, the debate is focused on Microsoft and Sony, but PC gaming should not be forgotten.

There are a lot of benefits to playing PC games. Today’s PCs are incredibly powerful and if you have a high-end gaming PC, you should be in a good position to play any “next gen” game which is ported from a console. You’ll also enjoy spectacular graphics, improved physics and other nice extras in games which were developed with the PC as the lead platform.

A Single Generation

One of the best things about the PC is that there are no generations. When you upgrade your PC it does not mean that older games suddenly stop working. Even games written in the 1990s and intended to run on MS DOS still work fine modern PCs with a little tweaking. You don’t have to worry about your entire games catalogue becoming obsolete because you upgrade your PC.

If you’re new to the world of PC gaming, you can pick up a huge back-catalogue of games at bargain basement prices. There are online services offering old, classic titles in a DRM free form so you can download the game and install it on your PC and laptop if you like. Steam is the digital distribution platform of choice for most modern games and you can pick up Steam keys from a range of different websites.

The Joy of Mods

Another great feature of PC gaming is modding. Some console games, such as Little Big Planet, support user generated content but there is nothing that can match the sheer variety of the PC modding community.

PC gamers have created mods for almost everything you can imagine, from adding alien races to Civilization to re-creating Diablo II in the Neverwinter Nights engine. As a PC gamer, you can play a Space Marine in Skyrim, conquer Rohan in Civilization V and role-play as a survivor of a zombie apocalypse in ARMA 2. Modders have even invested huge amounts of time to improve the graphics of older games and patch game-breaking bugs in older games such as the early Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic titles and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.

The plug and play aspect of console gaming is convenient, but PC gaming has a lot to offer too. If you can afford it, why not try both during the next generation?

Peter Day is a software developer and games blogger from Manchester. He enjoys playing PC games and working on mods in his spare time. His favourite game from this generation is Super